Up to 3% of children admitted to hospital wards may require immediate medical assistance for treatment of adverse events such as actual or impending cardiopulmonary arrest. In both adults and children, preemptive management may prevent cardiopulmonary arrest and improve mortality, since the outcome of cardiopulmonary arrests in both adults and children is generally poor. Early identification and intervention may offer a means to prevent such adverse events (e.g., cardiopulmonary arrest) and thus improve patient outcomes. However, the provision of such preemptive care measures may rely on the timely identification of patients at risk and referral of these patients to the appropriate medical emergency team.
Two approaches to the timely identification of patients at risk may be used. First is the use of calling criteria, where patients meeting one or more specific triggering criteria are referred for medical treatment. Alternatively, “early warning” scores may be used. These “early warning” scores combine clinical parameters into a single score, such that patients with scores that exceed a predetermined threshold are identified and referred for medical treatment.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,097,617 to Smith describes a method of diagnosing patients having chronic pain, such as, medically unexplained symptoms or somatization, in order to assess a probability of relief of such pain through medical treatment. A self-reporting diagnostic test is provided that identifies and quantifies psychological and behavioral factors that can affect the treatment outcome for a patient sensitive to somatization. This might have a bearing on a decision by a physician to operate or otherwise medically treat a patient and the problems that could occur post-operatively or after treatment. The method diagnoses the probability of pain relief through medical treatment in a patient by administration of a test comprised of declarative statements of validity factors comprising defensiveness, predictiveness and carelessness, and clinical factors comprising somatic concern, depressed mode, passive personality, compulsive/obsessive personality, hypomania, and ego integrative defect. From the raw scores for each of the six (6) clinical factors, a scoring value of standard deviations above the normative group mean is calculated, enabling the clinician to produce a single numerical index score indicating and measuring the effect of somatization on the patient.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,454,705 to Cosentino et al. describes a medical system, apparatus, and method for monitoring and managing one or more ambulatory patients on a computer and allowing a caregiver to review the ambulatory patients' wellness parameters to provide treatment in accordance with the wellness parameters. The patient monitoring apparatus has a first communication device associated therewith for monitoring a patient's wellness parameters. A central computer is located remotely from the monitoring apparatus and in communication therewith. The central computer includes a second communication device for communicating wellness parameters and treatment data over a communications link established between the central computer and the patient monitoring apparatus, whereby the central computer is operated for querying the patient via the patient monitoring apparatus, receiving and processing measured wellness parameters from the patient monitoring apparatus, and calculating a score according to the wellness parameters. A main database is coupled to the central computer and includes patient medical records stored therein. One or more computer workstations are located remotely from and in communication with the central computer. The one or more computers have a third communication device for communicating physical examination data between the central computer and the one or more workstations over an established communication link. The score calculated by the central computer according to the wellness parameters is compared with a predetermined value, and based on the results of the comparison, the central computer issues an exception report. The exception report is communicated to the one or more remotely located workstations, whereby a caregiver located at the remote workstation site is notified of the exception report.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,322,502 to Schoenberg et al. describes a medical information system that receives patient data and information from various sources and displays such information in a variety of formats for use by members of a medical team in a hospital, clinic, or office. The medical information system includes a primary display, an associated display controller, and a system storage device. The controller is coupled to a primary interface unit. A keyboard and/or pointing device, a scanner, an audio input and/or output device, and a printer are all coupled by way of an interface to the display controller. Access to selected subsets of patient information is provided by user selection of specific data sets identified by job function selection icons. Multiple types of patient data are selectively displayed simultaneously, and to multiple remote users.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,438 to Graettinger et al. describes a neural network system and method for diagnosing patients', where medical conditions provide an efficient aid in identifying and interpreting factors which are significant in the medical diagnosis. The neural network system is trained to recognize medical conditions by being provided with input data that is available for a number of patients, and diagnosis is made by physicians in each case. Upon completion of the training period, the neural network system uses input measurement and interview data to produce a score, or a graded classification, of a patient's medical condition that is accompanied with a diagnosis interpretation. The diagnosis interpretation is a sorted catalogue of individual factors and interactions that influenced the score. The interpretive facility of the present invention is based on a comparison with a set of nominal values for each input factor or interaction. It can assist the physician in making a diagnosis of the patient's condition and can further provide a “second opinion” that may confirm the physician's findings, or point to ambiguities that call for a more detailed analysis.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0241972 to Lang et al. describes a method of measuring the effectiveness of a surgical or medical treatment carried out on a patient population. The method involves the steps of selecting a patient population, deriving pre-treatment score and post-treatment scores for each patient based on their questionnaire responses to quality of life-related criteria, deriving an adjusted score by subtracting the pre-treatment score from the post-treatment score, and analyzing the distribution of patients having each adjusted score to provide a measure of the effectiveness of the surgical or medical treatment. The population of patients may include patients having different values of a variable affecting the effectiveness of the surgical treatment. The effect of these variables on the adjusted scores may be analyzed by a computerized statistical software program.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0125256 to Schoenberg et al. describes a medical information system that receives patient data and information from various sources and displays such information in a variety of formats for use by members of a medical team in a hospital, clinic, or office. The medical information system receives patient information from doctors, pharmacists, patient monitoring equipment, testing laboratories, and/or computer databases. Access to selected subsets of patient information is provided by user selection of specific data sets identified by job function selection icons. A member of the medical team can record observations about a patient using key words and phrases which can be supplemented with additional text for customized notation. Multiple types of patient data are selectively displayed simultaneously, and to multiple remote users. The system can access stored data according to user-specified formulae to compute a score or metric which reflects a relationship between various factors, where each factor is weighted appropriately according to its significance, as defined in the formula. A user can selectively display data in graphic form by “clicking” on a row of tabular data in a tabular region of the display and “dragging and dropping” that row to a graphic display region of the display.
It is therefore at least one object of the present invention to provide a novel vital sign evaluation tool, system and method of preemptively identifying patients that are at risk of adverse events such as cardiopulmonary arrest.